Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 15, No. 119.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
[1] From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@bowerbird.rmit.edu.au> (33)
Subject: Re: 15.109 ... logistics of webcasting?
[2] From: "Francois Crompton-Roberts" <F.Crompton- (47)
Roberts@qmw.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: 15.107 hypertext and cooking?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 07:48:45 +0100
From: Adrian Miles <adrian.miles@bowerbird.rmit.edu.au>
Subject: Re: 15.109 ... logistics of webcasting?
At 6:59 AM +0100 22/6/01, Humanist Discussion Group wrote:
>1) does audio only present less of a hurdle from the production and
>reception. I ask because it seems intutive that audio files take up
>less bandwidth than video plus audio and that it may be easier for the set
>up to dealon only with microphones and not microphones and cameras
yes in terms of collecting/capturing, but when delivering adding a slide
show helps a lot. if done properly it makes small difference to the final
file size so complements sound tracks well.
>2) what factors influence the choice of format? I ask because some formats
>are not based on proprietary software and are therefore more easy to clip
>and embed as citations in electronic papers and more easy to cue with edit
>lines for retrieval purposes. Of course what may be gained in
>post-production ease may be lost in streaming capacity.
oodles of things :-) SMIL (Structured Multimedia Instruction Language) is
having an impact in this area, and the major three formats for delivery are
quicktime, windows media, and real. other ones are things like mpeg2 which
require much higher data rates but tend to be used for archival purposes.
my preference is quicktime for a large range of reasons, primarily it is
robust and offers very substantial scripting, multiple tracks, and supports
things like sprites, tween tracks, vector graphics, etc.
for real time (live) streaming real does the best job, but in any context
where people care about their images, quicktime is the only choice.
on the horizon are things like mpeg7 and mpeg21 which are metadata
standards more than hardware and software issues, but very relevant to the
interests of humanist.
i'm happy to talk about this in more detail but its an enormous area so
some specific questions would be useful :-)
cheers
adrian miles
--lecturer in new media and cinema studies + media studies. rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au] + institutt for medievitenskap. university of bergen [http://media.uib.no]
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------ Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 07:49:18 +0100 From: "Francois Crompton-Roberts" <F.Crompton-Roberts@qmw.ac.uk> Subject: Re: 15.107 hypertext and cooking?
> I wonder if in your review of the literature on and about hypertext > you have encountered cookery metaphors. > > I ask because this excerpt from Julia Child echoes some of the > concerns raised recently through the postings to Humanist > subscribers. For those who prefer analogies other than the culinary, > they may think in general terms of textbooks. Ms. Child writes : > > <cite> > But what a problem for cookery bookery writers. How are we to know > the extent of our reader's experience? I, for one, have solved that > riddle by deciding to tell all. And I hope by the clever use of > headings in the main text such as "For the sauce veloute," "Beating > the egg whites," "Clarifying the stock," and so forth, that the > experienced cook will know where to skip along fast through the > verbiage. But the full explanations are there for those who need > them. </cite> > > Julia Child > _From Julia Child's Kitchen_ > New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1975 > x-xi > > It is also evident that Ms. Child's experience with episodic > delivery is akin to the lecture series. Her use of such cultural > capital is worthy of emulation. She offers alternative ways of > exploiting one's performances : " Where _The French Chef Cookbook_ > takes all the recipes for the black-and-white shows and sets them > forth as they were shown on the air, inorder and without further > comment, this book pulls the new color shows apart and sets their > subject matter into categories: soups, fish, meats, and so forth. > (But it lists the shows and cross references them in the Appendix, > thus making their recipes immediately accessible.)" > > Some one in the publishing world had an eye to releasing a set of > video tapes keyed to the book. > > Has any one working on the archeology of multimedia explored such > precursors?
The use of cookery metaphors in computing is certainly very old. I remember Dr A. Colin Day's video Fortran IV course (remember that language? It looks rather like a high-level assembly code now!) using just that recipe metaphor to explain the difference between a function and a subroutine. That was in the mid-1970's at University College London. I suppose that the sheer visible, down-to-earth practicality of cookery contrasts well with the abstract non-visual nature of computing. And both give tangible results in the end...
Francois C-R
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